Bookkeeping, double-entry

(1,601 words)

Article Table of Contents

1. Bookkeeping in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Bookkeeping or accounting is probably almost as old as commercial activity itself. In Sumerian Mesopotamia (3rd millennium BCE), commercial transactions were already being recorded on clay tablets. This simple method of bookkeeping, in use since antiquity, served to document completed transactions as a reminder for the trader and as evidence in legal disputes. The Roman Corpus iuris ci…